No it's Message Services not Messenger Services. MS is run over Windows SMB protocol. Means either you don't have the built in firewall that XP has turned on(off by default) or you don't have any firewalling at all. www.grc.com run the shields up program.

No it's Message Services not Messenger Services. MS is run over Windows SMB protocol. Means either you don't have the built in firewall that XP has turned on(off by default) or you don't have any firewalling at all. www.grc.com run the shields up program.

Thanks. I turned it on for my XP machine. My other is Win2000 and doesn't have one built in. I've made a note of grc.com, but have also contacted Symantec as I already use their antivirus.

More...

It's not a virus problem and Nortons(unless you're using their firewall product too) won't be able to do anything about it becasue it's a Windows OS issue with typically the RPC being the problem. Most of the time if you stop the RPC releated services then it will stop. Also this problem can happen with Windows 2k. Need to my sure the firewall is tight as a drum.

It's not a virus problem and Nortons(unless you're using their firewall product too) won't be able to do anything about it becasue it's a Windows OS issue with typically the RPC being the problem. Most of the time if you stop the RPC releated services then it will stop. Also this problem can happen with Windows 2k. Need to my sure the firewall is tight as a drum.

my 2c worth

Bsulli

More...

"... stop the RPC related services..." ???. I don't know what that is. Care to enlighten? Also, I thought of Norton for firewall just because of possible compatibility issues. TIA

The mynetwatchman.com link is very detailed. It says that to block RPC based popups, configure your firewall to block inbound udp packets at port 135. Netbios based scans can be stopped by blocking udp/137 and tcp/139 inbound.

Most of you using NAT probably have all inbound messages blocked by default anyway.

The directadvertiser.com site says to stop popups, place the Messenger service on manual or disable. I also placed the Alerter service on manual because it seemed to do the same thing. Of course using this method you won't get those admin alerts at all which could be a problem if you are on a LAN group that uses those messages. If you are in a LAN group, then you are probably behind a corporate firewall which already stops those popups.